The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was labeled “extremist” by Germany’s spy service on Friday, allowing it to increase surveillance on the nation’s largest opposition party, which criticized the action as a “blow against democracy.”
According to a 1,100-page analysis by specialists, the AfD is racist and anti-Muslim. This classification has rekindled calls for the party to be banned and gives the security services the ability to recruit informants and overhear party communications.
The BfV domestic intelligence agency said in a statement, “The ethnically and ancestrally defined concept of the people that shapes the AfD is central to our assessment, which devalues entire segments of the population in Germany and violates their human dignity.”
